CHAPTER I

IN WHICH MISS ST. QUENTIN BEARS WITNESS TO THE FAITH THAT IS IN
HER

HONORIA divested herself of her travelling‐cap, thrust her hands
into the pockets of her frieze ulster, and thus, bare‐headed, a tall,
supple, solitary figure, paced the railway platform in the dusk. Above the
gentle undulations of the western horizon splendours of rose‐crimson sunset
were outspread, veiled, as they flamed upward, by indigo cloud of the
texture and tenuity of finest gauze. And those same rose‐crimson splendours
found repetition upon the narrow, polished surface of the many lines of
rails, causing them to stand out, as though of red‐hot metal, from the
undeterminate grey‐drab of the track where it curved away, south‐eastward,
across the darkening country towards the Savoy Alps. And from out the
fastnesses of these last, quick with the bleak purity of snow, came a
breathing of evening wind. To Honoria it brought refreshing emphasis of
silence, and of immunity from things human and things mechanical. It spoke
to her of virgin and unvisited spaces, ignorant of mankind and of obligation
to his so many and so insistent needs. And there being in Honoria herself a
kindred defiance of subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical
and emotional chastity, she welcomed these intimations of the essential
inviolability of nature, finding in them justification and support of her
own mental attitude—of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned,
grown slightly suspicious of late.

page: 491

And this was the more grateful to her, not only as contrast to the noise and
dust of a lengthy and hurriedly‐undertaken journey; but because that same
journey had been suddenly, and, in a sense violently, imposed upon one whom
she held in highest regard, by another whom she had long since agreed with
herself to hold in no sort of regard at all. Since the highly‐regarded one
set forth, she—Honoria—of course, set forth likewise. And yet, in good
truth, the whole affair rubbed her not a little the wrong way! She
recognised in it a particularly flagrant example of masculine aggression.
Some persons, as she reflected, are permitted an amount of elbow‐room
altogether disproportionate to their deserts. Be sufficiently selfish,
sufficiently odious, and everybody becomes your humble servant, hat in hand!
That is unfair. It is, indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the
dispassionate onlooker. And, in Miss St. Quentin’s case, exasperation was by
no means lessened by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not
only as to the actuality of her own dispassionateness, but, as has already
been stated, as to the wisdom of her mental attitude generally. She wanted
to think and feel one way. She was more than half afraid she was much
disposed to think and feel quite another way. This was worrying. And,
therefore, it came about that Honoria hailed the present interval of silence
and solitude, striving to put from her remembrance both the origin and
object of her journey, while filling her lungs with the snow‐fed purity of
the mountain wind and yielding her spirit to the somewhat serious influences
of surrounding nature. All too soon the great Paris‐express would thunder
into the station. The heavy, horse‐box‐like sleeping‐car—now standing on the
Culoz‐Geneva‐Bâle siding—would be coupled to the rear of it. Then the roar
and rush would begin again—from dark to dawn, and on through the long,
bright hours to dark once more, by mountain gorge, and stifling tunnel, and
broken woodland, and smiling coast‐line, and fertile plain, past Chambéry,
and Turin, and Bologna, and mighty Rome herself, until the journey was ended
and distant Naples reached at last.

But Miss St. Quentin’s communings with nature were destined to speedy
interruption. Ludovic Quayle’s elongated person, clothed to the heels in a
check travelling‐coat, detached itself from the company of waiting
passengers, and blue‐linen‐clad porters, upon the central platform before
the main block of station buildings, and made its light and active way
across the intervening lines of crimson‐stained metals.

“If I am a nuisance mention that chastening fact without hesitation,” he
said, standing on the railway track and looking
page: 492 up at her with his air of very urbane
intelligence. “Present circumstances permit us the privilege—or otherwise—of
laying aside restraints of speech, along with other small proprieties of
behaviour commonly observed by the polite. So don’t spare my feelings, dear
Miss St. Quentin. If I am a bore, tell me so; and I will return, and that
without any lurking venom in my breast, whence I came.”

“Do anything you please,” Honoria replied, “except be run over by the Paris
train.”

“The Paris train, so I have just learned, is an hour late, consequently its
arrival hardly enters into the question. But, since you are graciously
pleased to bid me do as I like, I stay,” Mr. Quayle returned, stepping on to
the platform and turning to pace beside her.—“What a gaol delivery it is to
get into the open! That last engine of ours threw ashes to a truly
penitential extent. My mouth and throat still claim unpleasantly close
relation to a neglected, kitchen grate. And if our much vaunted wagon‐lits is the last word of civilisation in
connection with travel, then all I can say is that, in my humble opinion,
civilisation has yet a most exceedingly long way to go. It really is a
miraculously uncomfortable vehicle. And how Lady Calmady contrives to endure
its eccentricities of climate and of motion, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“In her case the end would make any sort of means supportable,” Honoria
answered.

Her pacings had brought her to the extreme end of the platform where it
sloped to the level of the track. She stood there a moment, her head thrown
back, snuffing the wind as a hind, breaking covert, stands and snuffs it. A
spirit of questioning possessed her, though not—as in the hind’s case—of
things concrete and material. It is true she could have dispensed with Mr.
Quayle’s society. She did not want him. But he had shown himself so full of
resource, so considerate and helpful, ever since the news of Sir Richard
Calmady’s desperate state had broken up the peace of the little party at
Ormiston Castle, now five days ago, that she forgave him even his
preciousness of speech, even his slightly irritating superiority of manner.
She had ceased to be on her guard with him during these days of travel, had
come to take his presence for granted and to treat him with the comfortable
indifference of honest good‐fellowship. So, it happened that now, speaking
with him, she continued to follow out her existing train of thought.

“I’m by no means off my head about poor Dickie Calmady,” she said
presently,—“specially where Cousin Katherine is con‐
page: 493 cerned. I couldn’t go on caring about anybody,
irrespective of their conduct, just because they were they. And yet I can’t
help seeing it must be tremendously satisfying to feel like that.”

“A thousand pardons,” Ludovic murmured, “but like what?”

“Why as Cousin Katherine feels—just whole‐heartedly, without analysis, and
without alloy—to feel that no distance, no fatigue, no nothing in short,
matters, so long as she gets to him in time. I don’t approve of such a state
of mind, and yet”—Honoria wheeled round, facing the glory of colour dyeing
all the west—“and yet, I’m untrue enough to my own principles rather to envy
it.”

She sighed, and that sigh her companion noted and filed for reference.
Indeed, an unusually expansive cheerfulness became perceptible in Mr.
Quayle.

“By‐the‐bye, is there any further news?” she inquired.

“General Ormiston has just had a telegram.”

“Anything fresh?”

“Still unconscious, strength fairly maintained.”

“Oh! we know that by heart!” Honoria said.

“We do. And we know the consequences of it—the sweet little see‐saw of hope
and fear, productive of unlimited discussion and anxiety. No weak letting
one stand at ease about that telegram! It keeps one’s nose hard down on the
grindstone.”

“If he dies,” Honoria said slowly, “if he dies—poor, dear Cousin
Katherine!—When can we hear again?”

“At Turin,” Mr. Quayle replied.

Then they both fell silent until the far end of the platform was reached. And
there, once more, Honoria paused, her small head carried high, her serious
eyes fixed upon the sunset. The rosy light falling upon her failed to
disguise the paleness of her face or its slight angularity of line. She was
a little worn and travel‐stained, a little dishevelled even. Yet to her
companion she had rarely appeared more charming. She might be tired, she
might even be somewhat untidy; but her innate distinction remained—nay,
gained, so he judged, by suggestion of rough usage endured. Her absolute
absence of affectation, her unselfconsciousness, her indifference to
adventitious prettinesses of toilet, her transparent sincerity, were very
entirely approved by Ludovic Quayle.

“Yes, that see‐saw of hope and fear must be an awful ordeal, feeling as she
does,” Miss St. Quentin said presently. “And yet, even so, I am uncertain. I
can’t help wondering which really is best!”

page: 494

“Again a thousand pardons,” the young man put in, “but I venture to remind
you that I was not cradled in the fore‐court of the temple of the Pythian
Apollo, but only in the nursery of a conspicuously philistine, English
country‐house.”

For the first time during their conversation Honoria looked full at him. Her
glance was very friendly, yet it remained meditative, even a trifle sad.

“Oh! I know, I’m fearfully inconsequent,” she said. “But my head is simply
rattled to pieces by that beastly wagon‐lits. I had gone back to what I was thinking about
before you joined me, and to what we were saying just now about Cousin
Katherine.”

“Yes—yes, exactly,” Ludovic put in tentatively. She was going to give herself
away—he was sure of it. And such giving away might make for opportunity. In
spirit, the young man proceeded to take his shoes from off his feet. The
ground on which he stood might prove to be holy. Moreover Miss St. Quentin’s
direct acts of self‐revelation were few and far between. He was horribly
afraid those same shoes of his might creak, so to speak, thereby startling
her into watchfulness, making her draw back. But Honoria did not draw back.
She was too much absorbed by her own thought. She continued to contemplate
the glory of the flaming west, her expression touched by a grave and noble
exaltation.

“I suppose one can’t help worrying a little at times—it’s laid hold of me
very much during the last month or two—as to what is really the finest way
to take life. One wants to arrive at that fairly early; not by a process of
involuntary elimination, on the burnt‐child‐fears‐the‐fire sort of
principle, when the show’s more than half over, as so many people do. One
wants to get hold of the stick by the right end now, while one’s still
comparatively young, and then work straight along. I want my reason to be
the backbone of my action, don’t you know, instead of merely the push of
society and friendship, and superficial odds and ends of so‐called
obligation to other people.”

“Yes,” Mr. Quayle put in again.

“Now, it seems to me, that”—Honoria extended one hand towards the sunset—“is
Cousin Katherine’s outlook on life and humanity, full of colour, full of
warmth. It burns with a certain prodigality of beauty, a superb absence of
economy in giving. And that”—with a little shrug of her shoulders she turned
towards the severe, and sombre, eastern landscape—“that, it strikes me,
comes a good deal nearer my own. Which is best?”

Mr. Quayle congratulated himself upon the removal of his
page: 495 shoes. The ground was holy—holy to the point of
embarrassment even to so unabashable and ready‐tongued a gentleman as
himself. He answered with an unusual degree of diffidence.

“And you occupy it? Yes, you are very neatly balanced. But then, do you
really get anywhere?”

“Is not that a rather knavish speech, dear Miss St. Quentin?” the young man
inquired mildly.

“I don’t know,” she answered, “I wish to goodness I did.”

Now was here god‐given opportunity, or merely a cunningly devised snare for
the taking of the unwary? Ludovic pondered the matter. He gently kicked a
little pebble from the dingy grey‐drab of the asphalt on to the permanent
way. It struck one of the metals with a sharp click. A blue‐linen‐clad
porter, short of stature and heavy of build, lighted the gas lamps along the
platform. The flame of these wavered at first, and flickered, showing thin
and will‐o’‐the‐wisp‐like against the great outspread of darkening country
across which the wind came with a certain effect of harshness and
barrenness—the inevitable concomitant of its inherent purity. And the said
wind treated Miss St. Quentin somewhat discourteously, buffeting her,
obliging her to put up both hands to push back stray locks of hair. Also the
keen breath of it pierced her, making her shiver a little. Both of which
things her companion noting took heart of grace.

“Is it permitted to renew a certain petition?” he asked, in a low voice.

Honoria shook her head.

“’ Better not, I think,” she said.

“And yet, dear Miss St. Quentin, pulverised though I am by the weight of my
own unworthiness, I protest that petition is not wholly foreign to the
question you did me the honour to ask me just now.”

“Oh! dear me! You always contrive to bring it round to that!” she exclaimed,
not without a hint of petulance.

“Far from it,” the young man returned. “For a good, solid eighteen months,
now, I have displayed the accumulated patience of innumerable asses.”

“Of course, I see what you’re driving at,” she continued hastily. “But it is
not original. It’s just every man’s stock argument.”

“If it bears the hall‐mark of hoary antiquity, so much the better. I
entertain a reverence for precedent. And honestly, as common sense goes, I
am not ashamed of that of my sex.”

page: 496

Miss St. Quentin resumed her walk.

“You really think it stands in one’s way,” she said reflectively, “you really
think it a disadvantage, to be a woman?”

“Oh! good Lord!” Mr. Quayle ejaculated, softly yet with an air so humorously
aghast that it could leave no doubt as to the nature of his sentiments. Then
he cursed himself for a fool. His shoes indeed had made a mighty creaking!
He expected an explosion of scornful wrath. He admitted he deserved it. It
did not come.

Miss St. Quentin looked at him, for a moment, almost piteously. He fancied
her mouth quivered and that her eyes filled with tears. Then she turned and
swung away with her long, easy, even stride. Mentally the young man took
himself by the throat, conscience‐stricken at having humiliated her, at
having caused her to fall, even momentarily, from the height of her serene,
maidenly dignity. For once he became absolutely uncritical, careless of
appearances. He fairly ran after her along the platform.

“Dear Miss St. Quentin,” he called to her, in tones of most persuasive
apology.

But Honoria’s moment of piteousness was past. She had recovered all her
habitual lazy and gallant grace when he came up with her.

“No—no,” she said. “Hear me. I began this rather foolish conversation. I laid
myself open to—well to a snubbing. I got one, anyhow!”

“In mercy don’t rub it in!” Mr. Quayle murmured contritely.

“But I did,” Honoria returned. “Now it’s over and I’m going to pick up the
pieces and put them back in their places‐just where they were before.”

“But I protest!—I hailed a new combination. I discover in myself no wild
anxiety to have the pieces put back just where they were before.”

“Oh yes, you do!” Honoria declared. “At least, you certainly will when I
explain it to you.”—She paused.—“You see,” she said, “it is like this.
Living with and watching Cousin Katherine, I have come to know all that side
of things at its very finest.”

“Forgive me.—It? What? May I recall to you the fact of the philistine
nursery?”

The young lady’s delicate face straightened.

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” she said.—“ That which we all think
about so constantly, and yet affect to speak
page: 497 of as a joke or a slight impropriety—love, marriage, motherhood.”

“Yes, Lady Calmady is a past‐master in those arts,” Mr. Quayle replied.—Again
the ground was holy. He was conscious his pulse quickened.

“The beauty of it all, as one sees it in her case, breaks one up a little.
There is no laugh left in one about those things. One sees that to her they
are of the nature of religion—a religion pure and undefiled, a new way of
knowing God and of bringing oneself into line with the truth as it is in
Him. But, having once seen that, one can decline upon no lower level. One
grows ambitious. One will have it that way or not at all.”

Honoria paused again. The bleak wind buffeted her. But she was no longer
troubled or chilled by it, rather did it brace her to greater fearlessness
of resolve and of speech.

“You are contemptuous of women,” she said.

“I have betrayed characteristics of the ass, other than its patience,”
Ludovic lamented.

“Oh! I didn’t mean that,” Honoria returned, smiling in friendliest fashion
upon him. “Every man worth the name really feels as you do, I imagine. I
don’t blame you. Possibly I am growing a trifle shaky as to feminine
superiority, and woman spelled with a capital letter, myself. I’m awfully
afraid she is safest—for herself and others—under slight restraint, in a
state of mild subjection. She’s not quite to be trusted, either
intellectually or emotionally—at least, the majority of her isn’t. If she
got her head, I’ve a dreadful suspicion she would make a worse hash of
creation generally than you men have made of it already, and that”—Honoria’s
eyes narrowed, her upper lip shortened, and her smile shone out again
delightfully—“that’s saying a very great deal, you know.”

“The Paris train is late. There is time. And this is all excellent
hearing.”

“I’m not quite so sure of that,” Honoria said. “For, you see, just in
proportion as I give up the fiction of her superiority, and admit that woman
already has her political, domestic, and social deserts, I feel a chivalry
towards her, poor, dear thing, which I never felt before. I even feel a
chivalry towards the woman in myself. She claims my pity and my care in a
quite new way.”

“Ah! wait a minute,” she repeated. Her tone changed, sobered. “I don’t want
to spread myself, but you know I can meet men pretty well on their own
ground. I could shoot and fish as well as most of you, only that I don’t
think it right to take life except to provide food, or in self‐defence.
There’s not so much happiness going that one’s justified in cutting any of
it short. Even a jack‐snipe may have his little affairs of the heart, and a
cock‐salmon his gamble. But I can ride as straight as you can. I can break
any horse to harness you choose to put me behind. I can sail a boat and
handle an axe. I can turn my hand to most practical things—except a needle.
I own I always have hated a needle worse—well, worse than the devil! And I
can organise, and can speak fairly well, and manage business affairs tidily.
And have I not even been known—low be it spoken—to beat you at lawn tennis,
and Lord Shotover at billiards?”

“Blissful, positively blissful, and with twins too! Think of it!—Decies is
blissful also. His sense of humour has deteriorated since his marriage, from
constant association with good, little Connie who was never distinguished
for ready perception of a joke. He regards those small, simultaneous
replicas of himself with unqualified complacency, which shows his
appreciation of comedy must be a bit blunted.”

“I wonder if it does?” Miss St. Quentin observed reflectively. Whereat Mr.
Quayle permitted. himself a sound as nearly approaching a chuckle as was
possible to so superior a person.

“A thousand pardons,” he murmured, “but really, dear lady, you are so very
much off on the other tack.”

“Am I?” Miss St. Quentin said. “Well, you see—to go back to my
demonstration—I’ve none of the quarrel with your side of things most women
have, because I’m not shut out from it, and so I don’t envy you. I can amuse
and interest myself on your lines. And therefore I can afford to be very
considerate and tender of the woman in me. I grow more and more resolved
that she shall have the very finest going, or that she shall have nothing,
in respect of all which belongs to her special province—in regard to love
and marriage. In them she shall have what
page: 499
Cousin Katherine has had, and find what Cousin Katherine has found, or all
that shall be a shut book to her forever. Even if discipline and denial make
her a little unhappy, poor thing, that’s far better than letting her decline
upon the second best.”

Honoria’s voice was full and sweet. She spoke from out the deep places of her
thought. Her whole aspect was instinct with a calm and reasoned enthusiasm.
And, looking upon her, it became Ludovic Quayle’s turn to find the evening
wind somewhat bleak and barren. It struck chill, and he turned away and
moved westwards towards the sunset. But the rose‐crimson splendours had
become faint and frail; while the indigo cloud had gathered into long,
horizontal lines as of dusky smoke, so that the remaining brightness was
seen as through prison bars. A sadness, indeed, seemed to hold the west,
even greater than that which held the east, since it was a sadness not of
beauty unborn, but of beauty dead. And this struck home to the young man. He
did not care to speak. Miss St. Quentin walked beside him in silence, for a
time. When at last she spoke it was very gently.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she pleaded. “I like you so much that—that
I’d give a great deal to be able to think less of my duty to the tiresome
woman in me.”

“I would give a great deal too,” he declared, regardless of grammar.

“But I’m not the only woman in the world, dear Mr. Quayle,” she protested
presently.

“But I, unfortunately, have no use for any other,” he returned.

“Ah, you distress me!” Honoria cried.

“Well, I don’t know that you make me superabundantly cheerful.”

Just then the far‐away shriek of a locomotive and dull thunder of an
approaching train. Mr. Quayle looked once more towards the western
horizon.

“Here’s the Paris‐express!” he said. “We must be off if we mean to get round
before our horse‐box is shunted.”

He jumped down on to the permanent way. Miss St. Quentin followed him, and
the two ran helter‐skelter across the many lines of metals, in the direction
of the Culoz‐Geneva‐Bâle siding. That somewhat childish and undignified
proceeding ministered to the restoration of good‐fellowship.

“Great passions are rare,” Mr. Quayle said, laughing a little. His
circulation was agreeably quickened. How surprisingly
page: 500 fast this nymph‐like creature could get over the
ground, and that gracefully, moreover, rather in the style of a lissome,
long‐limbed youth than in that of a woman!

“Rare? I know it,” she answered, the words coming short and sharply. “But I
accept the risk. A thousand to one the book remains shut forever.”

“And I, meanwhile, am not too proud to pass the time of day with the second
best, and take refuge in the accumulated patience of innumerable asses.”